As the Kindle 3 will only have a fixed 4GB memory I want to ask if previous Kindle 1 or 2 users have opened it up and replaced the internal memory or not so that other people will know the options or possibilities.

Only 4 Gig? That will hold more than 3500 books. That is more than you can read in your entire life. I have a Cybook with 'only' 512 MB. That holds 650 books at this moments and I still have 25% left. The biggest problem is not how many books you can put on your reader, but how you can find the one you want.

This would probably be the site to check to see the guts. I've never heard of anybody replacing the storage but it has probably been attempted somewhere. I don't know if they ever did the new Kindle DX, which would probably be more representative of the Kindle 3.

Kindle 1 had a user-accessible card slot, actually. They got rid of that in the Kindle 2. Personally I wouldn't risk it since I believe the memory chip is directly attached to the board. It's not a card slot. Personally I have no need for more than 4GB. That's a ton of books. I don't really listen to music or audiobooks from the Kindle even though it's supported. I prefer a smaller device, like my phone, for that.

what if the OP wants to have his 6GB music collection on it???? kindle doesn't have to be used only for reading....

For the sake of argument, lets make that a 6GB audiobook collection (with audible's highest quality format, 6GB is about 250 hours), especially since K3 has access to Audible store now as well.

I doubt very much that Kindle is designed for good music reproduction...or they'd add ability to download from Amazon MP3 store too...

For sure 4GB is not enough for some folks, especially those 'I want my Kindle to store all the books I've ever read or hope to read' folks. But probably they are also out of luck with 16GB. For that, I like the web server over 3G idea; wifi and the new webkit browser will make this even more feasible.

Why do you need more than 4GB? I can't imagine a need for more space than that (at least not one that can't be better serviced some other way).

If you want to carry around your music, wouldn't an MP3 player be more convenient? If you want to carry around lots of large files, a portable hard drive/USB stick would be better.

If you want to carry around several thousand books that you want to access at any time, then I suppose keeping them on the Kindle is the best way, but that's probably not a common enough usage to make Amazon increase the Kindle's storage.

Perhaps getting a tablet computer instead of a Kindle would be more versatile for your needs (tablets allow USB input, memory cards, etc. to be added).

Did you actually update the memory in your kindle or was this a theoretical explanation?

A bit of both, actually. A co-worker had a Kindle with a broken display, but it still worked, so we used it for hacking. We removed the 2GB chip and replaced it with a 4GB chip (the same one the DX uses). Unfortunately, the Kindle never worked again - even after we replaced the original chip, so we must have messed something else up in the process.

My interest in the project also decreased after I loaded 10,000 books on a Kindle, which renders it all but useless. You can read about that here.

For sure 4GB is not enough for some folks, especially those 'I want my Kindle to store all the books I've ever read or hope to read' folks. But probably they are also out of luck with 16GB. For that, I like the web server over 3G idea; wifi and the new webkit browser will make this even more feasible.

Those are the "I've downloaded all these eBooks from the Darknet and I want to show them all off. But I'll never even read 1/2 of them cause I'm a collector, not a user."

Well, I was wondering about this too, mostly because of music to listen to while I read. I listen to 4-5 weekly DJ shows that are available as free downloads from their websites or iTunes. (For instance, Suzy Solar's weekly radio show, http://suzysolar.com/suzysolar/category/tracklists/)

But they are about 160-220 megabytes each. So each week basically I have a gig of music to listen to. However, I often don't have the time to listen to everything in a week, so I like to catch up when I can. Being able to load 3-4 weeks worth of shows on it would be nice. Instead of probably 1-2 weeks.

And really, 3500 books is a lot, but probably only 1/3 that I've read in my life, and I'm just barely middle aged. If you read for 2-3 hours a day, you can pretty easily read 400-500 a year. Then again, that would still take several years to read for most people, and if you can't change the books in years, well.

I would be careful with statements such as "4 GB is enough for everyone", Bill Gates is (in)famous for such an argument.

Well, in my opinion, 4 GB is ridiculous considering memory prices these days, and even more absurd is the fact that the Kindle doesn't have a MicroSD slot. I really doubt Amazon engineers would have trouble adding a card slot without increasing the physical size, so it's probably a market decision.

Although I am definitely going to buy a Kindle 3, I don't really like Amazon's policies. They are starting to look a lot like Apple, and that is a very bad thing.